About Me

My name is Michael S. Repton. I'm known as Nuntar (or Nuntarin) on the ZBB and the Lemmings forums and zarathustra47 on GameFAQs. I was born in 1982; my family comes from South Africa but I live in England.

I have been involved in creating worlds and stories as long as I can remember; when I was six I had a series planned out in my head in which one country were the good guys and their names all started with Z; another were the bad guys and their names all started with V. I'm currently working on a 13-book fantasy series called An Improbable Odyssey; the first book will be called The Adventures of Athribar. Look out for it.

Mathematics was my best subject in high school; I took my A-level four years early and later competed in the 2000 International Mathematical Olympiad in South Korea. After leaving high school I studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and subsequently took a Masters in Philosophy at the University of Leeds, finishing in 2006.

It was while I was at Oxford that I dragged out of the cupboard some notes relating to a fantasy world I had been working on every now and then over the previous seven years. I decided to have another go at working out the details of the world and its languages, but this time more carefully. I found my way to Mark Rosenfelder's Language Construction Kit, posted a query about a point I didn't understand on the ZBB, and was unable to drag myself away.

The ZBB was the second online community I had been part of; I was active on GameFAQs for a long while, particularly on the Harry Potter board, where I helped organise a quiz game called “Who Wants to be a Harry Potter Genius?” (Not very catchy, but I didn't choose the title.) But I was much more attracted to the ZBB from the outset because of its community spirit and the high number of like-minded, fairly intelligent people; ever since then I have been one of the board's most active members, and hold the record for the most fellow ZBBers met in person (50).

I also write music; my most recent compositions have been setting to music some Kardii folk songs. Naturally, I love to read; my favourite author of all is G. K. Chesterton, although there are many others I love, too many to list here. I play chess and bridge, though not very well, and I enjoy watching snooker.

And I can't not mention computer games. I love them; especially ones that really tax the brain. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a member of a forum devoted to Lemmings, and we design our own levels and challenge each other to solve them. I've also programmed some of my own games using Apple's HyperCard; in particular a puzzle game called Hubris in which the maddeningly simple objective is to sort a collection of objects into rows of three of the same kind, but the 96 levels ascend to a quite staggering difficulty.

Lastly, the music you are most likely to find me listening to would be Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Jim Croce, Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, Cat Stevens, or Hayley Westenra; but Leonard Cohen more than anyone. And my favourite composer of instrumental music is the wonderful Johann Sebastian Bach.